I stood on the elevated deck of the landing craft as we rocketed towards the shoreline, looking up at the stars. Outside of the USEF Civilian Zones and JIDA fortress-cities, artificial illumination was practically nonexistent, and as a result, the sky was incredibly clear.

Even after a month, looking up at the vault of stars overhead was enough to take my breath away. Men and monster, angels and demons... We could scurry around and fight our grandiose little wars, and stars would keep spinning, just as they always did.

In a way, it was sort of comforting.

The water around the landing craft was inky black in the pre-dawn darkness, and the shoreline ahead was visible as little more than an unusually uniform smudge of darkness along the horizon. I knew there were a total of twelve landing craft on the water, but between the darkness and the shimmer fields suppressing the visual presences of the vessels, I could see nothing.

Riding the assault boat, or more precisely, the hovercraft lander, was odd. The sound of the air cushion, while much quieter than it should have been, was constant and very unique. The craft moved with the calm Pacific waves, but the vessel stayed level with the surface of the water. It felt more like riding an indecisive elevator than a boat.

Seylaifeil stood beside me. She'd exchanged her usual waterfall-of-embers dress for a black leather coat and matching bodysuit, both outlined in deep red, all with the net effect of shifting her look from Victorian England to the Matrix.

"You are worried." Seylaifeil said. It wasn't a question.

I nodded. "I know its Max leading this operation, with Colonel Icherose as his second, and ultimately Admiral Hornmeyer who authorized it, so they bear final responsibility for the outcome here today. But I still came up with so much of the core strategy, I can't help but feel like I'm the one sending these men to their deaths."

"Oh, so it's a bad plan, then?" Seylaifeil said. "I think we still have time before we make landfall. I suppose we better call it off."

"That's not it." I said, frowning. "I think the plan is... a lot better than it could be, and head and shoulders above most of the alternatives. But even so, we're still going to lose people. There's just no way around that."

"So then what are you worried about?" Seylaifeil said. "Is it that you aren't fighting for the sake of a worthy cause?"

"Fundamental freedom and survival for the entire human race seems about as worthy as it's likely to get."

"Oh. You must be bothered by the fact that you're sending men into danger that you are unwilling to face yourself."

"I'm leading one of the Initial Strike Teams." I replied. "Word in the barracks is that the ISTs have the worst job in the whole operation."

Seylaifeil smiled. "You're right. So stop worrying. You've done everything within your power to improve the chances of this operation, and we both know it's a job that must be done. So with your bribes paid, your dice loaded, and your cards marked, the only thing left to do is play the game."

She tilted her head. "And you know what? Out there, the only thing anxiety can do is get in the way."

The door to the wheelhouse behind me opened, and Corporal Hinagiku Sylphrena walked out onto the deck. She wore the ornate green-and-black uniform of the Demon Army, with a spear only slightly shorter than she was in a harness on her back. She had pink hair, long enough to give a USEF sergeant an aneurysm, though she appeared to have somehow compressed it into the legion-style USEF nanogel/fullerene helmet I'd convinced her to wear for the battle.

"We've received the final reports from all detachments." Hinagiku said. "All five heavy landing ships are in position with full tanks and green lights across the board. Sensors and visual inspection report full network integrity. Hill stations and their defending companies are ready in all respects. The flying columns for the main assault are in dispersed cohesion and ready to advance. I believe all elements are ready."

"I concur." I said. "Call Command and-"

"Already approved." Hinagiku said. "You are free to advance at will."

"This is Trajan Actual to all units." I said, broadcast to all twelve of the ISTs. "Cross the Rubicon."

The timbre of the engine changed, and the landing craft began to accelerate towards the shoreline, aiming for the entrance of the inlet which formed the eastern border of the AO, and the area heavily inhabited by the vampires.

Heavily was, in my humble opinion, an understatement. Intel estimated somewhere around eighty thousand Vampires. Not all of those vampires would be soldiers, but they all had their inherent resilience and ungodly strength. And with centuries of unlife behind them, most would have at least some fighting experience.

There would also be the livestock; that number of vampires would indicate a minimum of a quarter of a million captives. Most of them would be children.

I wondered how many of them would survive the day.

The really sick part, of course, was that with a word, I could make that number zero. In a potential siege situation like this, those children represented the sole source of fresh blood for the city's vampires and as such were a perfectly valid military target. Given that long-term stockpiling of blood was impossible, and that the vampires needed it not only as nutrition but to fuel their regeneration and enchanted weaponry, the benefits of the move could be rather substantial.

It wouldn't even be all that hard. The vampire cities all had massive air purification enchantments, necessary to reduce their ventilation requirements from insane to merely outrageous, but they would reduce any atypical atmospheric gas that entered their effect fields.

However, there were certain compounds engineered for war, neurotoxins so mind-numbingly lethal that they could reach lethal concentrations throughout the city in a breathtakingly short span of time, long before the air purification spells could do their work. In Chess parlance, it would be a powerful opening gambit.

But I wasn't doing that. If my plan worked, and if we could keep control of the situation, there was a decent chance most of the captives would survive. That was what the math said, and what I had to believe.

Hinagiku tapped my shoulder. "We're arriving, sir."

"Thank you."

I closed my eyes, reaching for the shining column of blackness that was my bond with Seylaifeil. I touched it, and warmth enveloped my body as gold and obsidian armor took from, shaping itself perfectly over my uniform, which had been custom-made from thin nanofiber material with minimal decoration for that purpose.

The hovercraft began to decelerate, moving sideways as it did so. The whole vessel shook for a moment as it climbed over the rubble of a collapsed seawall, then came to rest in the center of what had once been a waterfront promenade.

Seylaifeil was right. There was no more time for worry. No time to think about who might get killed, or what I'd done wrong, or about the strage, incomprehensible dreams I'd been having.

Assault ramps dropped, and the Battle of Kochi began.

[x]

I ran in formation with Simon Squad, in the center of a hexagon formation.

Valeriya and Natalya Smirnov were the front two points of the formation. They were twins, more or less identical with incredibly pale skin, pure white hair, and glacial blue eyes. Both wore armor even heavier than mine in the color scheme of the Demon Army. Valeriya carried a massive warhammer and ornate shield, while her sister was armed with a set of four twelve-inch curved claw-blades mounted on the back of her gauntlet. Given the resemblance their attire bore to Tactical Dreadnought Armor, I had dubbed them the Terminator Twins.

Simon ran on the right point of the formation. He carried a falchion: a heavy, single-edged sword intended for chopping and hacking rather than anything more delicate. This one had tendrils of blackness occasionally arcing across its surface, though, which probably wasn't normal.

Hinagiku was on left point, carrying her obsidian spear, though nothing appeared unusual about her or her weapon yet.

Kurumi Sugiura and Tadayoshi Kuroda were in the rearguard. They were the only two members of the squad who actually looked classically Japanese. Kurumi carried a naginata, a long and slightly curved blade mounted on a staff analogous to a European Glaive. Specifically, she carried a ko-naginata, a lighter version of the weapon which was the traditional armament of a woman of the Samurai class. Her jet-black hair was bound back with red ribbon into a large ponytail, and her uniform appeared to have been modified to be especially flattering, though without running the risk of leaving extra skin exposed in battle.

Tadayoshi, on the other hand, seemed to be properly military. His hair was a textbook military crew cut, and the only modification he'd made to his uniform was the addition of several patches of ballistic material. He wore heavy gauntlets and bracers on his forearms and hands; they hosted his demon, Ramiel. Technically a Manifestation-class, Kuroda's demon was irregular in that is manifested in and around him, granting him the power to pluck spears out of the air and hurl them with insane power.

Out target, a nondescript concrete building, was several hundred yards from the waterline, but it only took us a couple of minutes to reach it, because having superpowers is awesome. We were able to move through the city safely; the advance parties had eliminated the vampire sentries well before we landed. JIDA illusionists ensured that the command posts underground received their regularly scheduled check-in messages just as late as always, and USEF cyber warfare specialists had cracked the electronic security more than a week ago and continuously recorded all of the sensor feeds, and had now replaced the current feeds with those from three days ago, a morning with weather similar to now.

Moving through the decaying city was unnerving. There were signs of fire everywhere. Even though the Vampires had moved to smother the flames before too many potential captives could be lost, many cities had still burned. Given that a nuclear winter would have been caused by the burning of cities rather than the atomic devices in and of themselves, it had created a similar effect. Combined with the sudden loss of carbon emissions, global warming was now the opposite of a thing.

Apparently, there had also been some truly spectacular sunsets.

We approached the building, then entered by jumping through the open gateway of a truck dock. The inside was one large space, and the first thing I noticed was Serena. She was in her battlesuit, railguns and gatlings trained on the door. Her eyes flashed as she saw us enter, and she stood down.

"Hello, Mark." She said, the unfiltered voice issuing from the suit's speakers amusingly ironic. "Hello, everyone."

I nodded, walking toward the objective. "How go things?"

"Fairly well." Fealty said, rapping her knuckles on the six-foot-diameter pipe rising up to about waist height next to her.

She was wearing light armor, maybe a striped-down version of the Myrmidon-Type Active Suit that was standard issue for USEF light infantry. While all Exile soldiers wore artifact armor, there was a huge range of Types, Patterns, and variants in service.

In short, an Active Suit was light infantry armor, which used artificial muscle strands to counteract its weight and provided a minor boost to strength and vitality when worn. Powered Armor was distinguished by the addition of mechanical augmentations to the armor system. Such suits wore more expensive, both due to manufacturing cost and the increased complexity of the required enhancements, and required a greater ability for Artifact use than Active Suits, but provided much more strength and protection with little sacrifice to dexterity and mobility.

The Armored Combat Suits worn by the Mobile Infantry were a category all to themselves. They synchronized to the user directly rather than responding to movement, and consisted of five separate independently operable synchronized artifacts, while lesser suits only possessed a single enchantment.

However, only one person in twelve could activate an Armored Combat Suit up to combat minimum performance, and that was no guarantee that that they would have the skills necessary to become a Mobile Infantryman, or be the sort of person who could be trusted with the power of an Armored Combat Suit.

In any case, I didn't recognize the pattern of Fealty's suit, which left her head exposed. The number of glowing lines gliding across her skin, which had been present as long as I'd known her, had increased by an order of magnitude, though she didn't seem to be giving any indication that anything was wrong.

"We have everything set up, and the hill stations report ready to go." Fealty said, leaning on the wall behind her. "We were just waiting for a few teams that were having technical difficulties, but they've been mostly resolved."

"So are we ready to breach?" I asked, stepping up next to the pipe and glancing down into the darkness.

"I'd say so." Fealty said, removing a cylindrical device the size of a water bottle from her belt. "Let's fucking do this!"

She handed me the cylinder, then grabbed another one. Hinagiku and Kurumi joined us, procuring devices of their own. We glanced at each other, and Fealty nodded.

I pulled the locking key out of its slot at the top of the device and twisted the cap, the other three doing likewise.

Then we threw the thermite detonation charges into the Sector Seven Main Ventilation Shaft of the Vampire City of Phlebemburg.

As awful as it was, Phlebemburg was hardly the worst of the names I'd seen. The Vampires really needed to learn how to branch out.

It only took a few seconds for the charges to hit the security plate that secured the shaft when it wasn't in use, which was fairly common for this one. The Vampires had been overly optimistic about the number of slaves they'd capture, so most of their cities had about twice as many intake ducts as they really needed.

We watched the thermite burn for about thirty seconds. We only saw an irregular pattern of orange-red, like the coals of a campfire. It was actually hot enough to be glowing bright yellow, but a machine spirit bound in the grenades lingered as they burned, minimizing the thermal emissivity of the thermite and vastly improving their ability to burn on contact.

Apparently, Fealty decided it was taking too long. She removed another grenade from her belt, armed it, and tossed it down the shaft.

As it hit bottom, she was looking back at us like we were the idiots. A few moments passed, then the security hatch gave out with a groan of tortured metal.

"Start setting up." I said, turning away from the duct and walking back toward Serena.

"I called the Colonel." She said, the volume on her speakers much lower than they'd been a few minutes ago. "He said that we're ready to go, but wants you to call it off if there's something he's missing."

I nodded. "Give me a general broadcast to the assault force."

Serena's suit nodded. "Okay. You're on."

"Humanity confides that every man will do his duty." I said, trying to project strength and calm with my voice.

I'd never done anything like this, but all the military history I'd read indicated that a commander's mood could be infectious. Even if I wasn't truly in command, I needed to display the attitude the assault force needed for the plan to work.

But for what it was worth, I think we had a plan Admiral Nelson would approve. It was a departure from strategic orthodoxy, as so much as this war could he said to have any, and it took risks where the reward was disproportionately large while remaining cautious where there was little to be gain.

Or so I hoped, anyway.

"Open the floodgates." As I spoke, Fealty grabbed a lever protruding from a box secured to the floor and pushed it forward.

Mere moments later, the eight large hoses ending in nozzles bolted to the rim of the air shaft began to pump seawater into the vampire city.

Collectively, they moved slightly more than sixty-four hundred gallons of water a minute. It worked out to about one cubic meter every two and a half seconds; enough to fill a large tanker truck in the time it took to play a TV-sized anime opening.

The water from the hoses was provided by a portion of the flow from a pair of much larger feeder lines, each of which moved enough water for two dozen of the hoses. Each feeder line led back to one of the hill stations above the city, which in turn connected, very indirectly, to the sea. But powerful as the heel pumps were, they could never have moved the volumes of water the plan called for on their own.

The horsepower for that task was provided by the five heavy landing ships, carefully 'beached' on steel frames some distance out of the ocean. Their powerful pump-jet engines could move upward of 2.5 million gallons per minute; some quick and vicious retrofitting made them perfect for the task. It had been a challenge connecting them to the hill stations, but the vampire patrols outside the surface city of Kochi proper were halfhearted at best, and the Corps of Engineers had finished laying the camouflaged pipes almost a week ago.

Acquiring the various hoses needed had been more difficult. Even after commandeering most of the relevant machinery is USEF territory, the last of the hoses had been finished only forty-eight hours ago. Helping to fight the thousand brushfires the plan had caused, along with keeping on my needed training, had made the past month a nightmare.

But as I savored the smell of the salt in the air, the echoing roar of the water cascading down the ventilation shaft, it suddenly felt like it had all been worthwhile.

The reckoning had begun.

[x]

A mile away, Virgil looked at the front gate to the Vampire City as the attack began in earnest, enclosed entirely in his armor. He could barely feel its presence, which only made it more uncomfortable.

The Engineers had gone to work on the city gate. It was more than two hundred meters across, stupidly tall, and was big enough to need to be buried in its own cavern well below the city. Shaped charge demolition devices had been placed all over the door. There were hundreds of small, coffee-can sized charges, as well as several dozen larger bombs the size and rough shape of stage lights. Wires ran between them in an insane spiderweb, linking the explosives back to the command consoles.

Virgil sighed. He'd lied on that day, when he meet Mark at the shooting range. He had lost his Stalker, but another one could have been procured. He hadn't been turned down for logistics reasons.

He'd simply been too good a Mobile Infantryman to spend any more time horsing around with the cavalry.

He hated it. Wearing the heavy suit, but feeling like it was part of his body, the jetpack maneuvers, the continuous influx of information... He shook his head. He'd requested a transfer to both the regular light and heavy infantry, but they'd been turned down. He tried to tell himself that he was lucky he had the chance to live somewhere as stable and safe as the USEF Controlled Zones, and he should be proud he had the chance to fight to protect that to the best of his ability, but that didn't make it any less uncomfortable.

A countdown appeared on his HUD. Ten seconds. It seemed to pass in the blink of an eye.

Then the charges detonated, and the gate collapsed into a cloud of dust.

Virgil charged forward at the head of a wave of Armored Combat Suits. The infantry needed time to fortify this position, and they couldn't do that with Vampires trying to force their position and take mile-long staircase.

So the Mobile Infantry would buy them that time.

[x]

Aria Valentine looked up from her holofields, which were displaying live footage of the ongoing battle from dozens of stealthed command observation drones positioned around the Area of Operations. The time was 0743, little more than two hours since twelve thousand soldiers of mankind had commenced their assault on Kochi, heralding the beginning of the first division-scale human offensive operation since the end of the world.

The flow of the battle had been unusual, just as much so as the human plan of attack. There had been a dozen major skirmishes across the surface city as the vampires mounted confused and largely reflexive counterattacks. Human units, scattered across the AO in pre-prepared strongpoints, engaged the emerging vampires. It had been hairy for about twenty minutes, with two stations pumping water into the city taken, but as the human main forces stationed outside the city arrived, the first vampire counters were thrown back or destroyed.

However, the largest action thus far had taken place in Phlebemburg itself. The first battalion of the 555th Mobile Infantry Regiment had descended the main stairs into the heart of the city and mounted a forward defense there as the engineers hastily constructed fortification at the ruined upper gate.

For a furious half hour, one thousand Mobile Infantrymen did battle with dozens of Nobles, twelve hundred vampire regulars, and several times as many vampire 'noncombatants', who were nonetheless nearly as dangerous as the soldiery, if slightly less organized.

The ACS had suffered over two hundred casualties, though most of those soldiers were unharmed and had simply suffered debilitating suit damage, which could generally be repaired in short order. But they had given as good as they'd got, and the lodgment they'd held had allowed dozens of squadrons of USEF combat drones to infiltrate the city. Afterwards, the ACS had retreated in good order, the flow of water down the massive staircase from the large-aperture pipes built into the fortifications at the top combined with more conventional supporting fire effectively preventing the vampires from pursuing.

Valentine opened up the feed compilation from one of the drone squads. The Autonomous Mechanical Airborne Combat Platform was still something of an experimental system, and this was the first time it was being deployed in combat and intended to be a productive rather than to test the system under live-fire conditions. They were operating within acceptable parameters, though she'd needed to manually adjust their shoot-no shoot protocols, and override them manually a few times. She would also probably need to send a memo about using the drones in areas with a significant civilian population.

Just as she was about to open the feed from another drone squad, an alert appeared on her display. Valentine frowned as she flicked it open. A moment later, her eyes widened. The captive vampire's core temperature had spiked to well over one hundred degrees, and her neurological activity had skyrocketed.

"Maximize atmospheric cooling in containment unit." Valentine commanded, activating her voice command interface as she stood up. "Triple air circulation, and extract standard samples for analysis."

She paused for a moment. "Raise internal threat status by twenty-five percent of the calculated value."

A deep breath. "Arm failsafes."

[x]

In the middle of the battlefield, as a hundred thousand men and monsters met in furious life-and-death combat, it seemed as though the impossible had happened.

Surrounded by the flames of a war I had played a... not small... part in igniting, I was bored.

Now that the battle was in progress, the numerous small conflicts were almost entirely directed by the Junior Officers and NCOs of the engaged units, and the few real decisions about the deployment of reserve troops were in the hands of the actual mission commanders. I wasn't involved in any strategic decisions, and I was completely isolated from tactical affairs by virtue of the fact that a grand total of zero vampires had even approached my pump station. I knew, from a purely logical point of view, I should be glad that I had yet to face a serious threat to my life, but...

I shook my head and leaned back against the wall. I needed to not think so much.

Serena stood just outside the building, the hulking form of her battlesuit motionless. Though the rest of us were all rotating through sentry duty, her sensors made that an empty gesture. I could think of a few fringe cases where she might miss something we would spot, but they were all ridiculous; the most plausible involved seventeen thousand goats and an industrial mixer.

We had been pumping water for a little more than four hours now, holding the line at the entrances to the underground city and beating back breakouts where possible. The pre-positioned reaction companies had reached their stations quickly, and as soon as the defense lines were finished, the Engineers had begun demolition work to allow them maximum mobility, which they had used to great effect.

"Mark." For the first time in an hour, my earpiece crackled to life.

"What is it, sir?"

"The ACS unit at the main entrance has engaged another vampire breakout attempt." Colonel Robichaux said briskly. "This one was battalion-strength, and they reached the top of the stairs before we forced them back. The drone feed is showing an even bigger force marshalling at the bottom of the stairs. If we don't reinforce more aggressively or let the machine gunners cut loose, I don't know if we can hold."

"You know the plan." I said. "We can't risk scaring them off. How many are we looking at in this wave?"

Max sighed. "At least fifteen thousand, half of them regulars. I think they want to punch through and start clearing us off the surface in one move."

"That's... More than I anticipated, but I think we can handle it. We set this up to be able to deal with twenty."

"We both know that was optimistic. This whole plan was."

I shrugged. "How can man die better than facing fearful odds? This isn't a world where playing it safe is a viable option."

Max muttered something that I couldn't make out. "I'm moving 4th Battalion into position behind the ACS. They should be in position to counterattack without being overly visible."

"That sounds good." I said, berating myself for not thinking of such an obvious solution. "Anything else?"

"Not now." Max said. "Don't die out there. That's an order."

[x]

Virgil leveled his M132 heavy rail rifle at the cloud of inky darkness and fired a long burst at the faint silhouettes of the vampires within. The silvery filaments pierced the insubstantial haze with ease, though they faded from sight quickly as they descended into darkness. Virgil picked up a spray of something on his sensors, though he had no way of knowing if it was a lethal, or even disabling, hit.

He really hoped it was a kill shot. Beyond general principles, there were a lot of Vampires currently trying to force the grand stair, and unlike in their first few attempts, they were actually behaving somewhat intelligently.

The enemy had built a series of barricades up the stair, most of which were actually more ramshackle than the one the USEF forces had constructed across the top of the stair. They had interlocking enchanted shields mixed in with curse-fused furniture and the ever-abundant concrete and steel rubble. The placement left something to be desired, but it was allowing the vampires to mass their force much more efficiently.

The rush of the water pouring from the pipes in the human barricade provided an odd background to the nonstop chatter of gunfire. The water rushed down the stair in a thin, turbulent sheet, breaking around the vampire barricades like river rocks. Combat under such conditions would be nearly impossible for normal human soldiers, but if it bothered the bloodsuckers, they we're showing it.

Abruptly, bullets began striking the human barricade most bouncing off with fountains of black sparks. Unlike the thaumaturgically-enhanced USEF technological weapons, the vampires used old-style chemical firearms essentially as delivery methods for destructive magic. Using a random patchwork of wards on the barricades, while reducing their absolute defensive strength, provided an effective countermeasure.

However, there was a fairly strong argument to be made that better cover made suppressive fire more effective.

Virgil switched his primary visual feed to his gunsight and held is rifle up over the wall. He could fire, but controlling the recoil was difficult, and under the best conditions, it would have been blowing into a hurricane. The vampire conscripts surged forward, firing wildly. For a moment, it seemed as if the human line would be overrun.

Then the Heavy Weapons Suit units went to work. Equipped with a pair of MV-44 'Reaper' automatic grenade launchers, they could cut down swaths of the enemy with metal and fire.

For the thirty or so seconds their ammo would last, anyway.

The vampire assault wave faltered, then started to fall back as the ACS infantry started to return fire. The enemy dropped back to their barricades, leaving a depressingly small number of empty robes and dropped weapons behind. The ACS had also taken relatively few casualties, but the vampires could afford the losses.

They had also managed to drag their cloud of darkness further up the stairs, though there far more than enough targets easily visible to maintain engagement.

"Drone infiltration units are reporting the main enemy mass moving onto the stair." Someone announced over the Joint Tactical Network. "Looks like this is the big one. Remember the special orders. Godspeed, gentlemen."

Paradoxically, the incoming fusillade actually seemed to slacken as the speaker finished. The vampires were probably moving forces into position to attack. The front ranks were likely comprised largely of the vampire militia; Virgil suspected they lacked the skill to be trusted to safely lay down a suppressing barrage while moving under fire.

Virgil sprang up fired three bursts in quick succession, then dropped before he could catch any accurate return fire. For a human force, an uncovered advance would be tantamount to suicide, but the vampires had the durability and regeneration to force the maneuver. The enemy continued massing for several minutes.

And then for a moment, the foe's guns fell silent.

For a moment, it felt almost as if some twisted simulacrum of peace had returned to the space that had become Virgil's world.

The vampires attacked.

A hurricane of hexcaster fire stuck the human line. Had Virgil not lived through the end of the world, may well have thought that the end had come. Several crackling bolts of crimson energy laced with absolute blackness shot up out of the darkness, fired by noble vampires somewhere below. They struck the barricade like battleship shells, vanishing in showers of scarlet and cobalt sparks as the defensive enchantments strained to negate the baleful energies.

The wards held. For the moment.

Then the enemy charged, a rolling tide of black and grey and red.

Virgil began to pour fire down onto them, but it seemed to do nothing, the rain of human fire utterly insignificant against the massed force of elemental evil.

[x]

"Blow the chokers and start the injectors." I said, watched the composite feeds on the tablet Fealty had helpfully provided, Seylafiel's ring oddly warm on my finger. "Sweep the leg."

[x]

Virgil frowned as the rate of water pouring down the stair tripled. In a bizarre, fragmentary moment of detached contemplation, he thought he saw an odd glimmer on a less turbulent patch of water.

Then his eyes widened. Virgil only had a moment to contemplate the fact that the vampires were slipping as though they'd charged into a minefield of Acme banana peels before the dozen or so concrete-wrapped and foam-filled mortars he'd had no idea were built into the wall around him fired.

[x]

Serena felt herself simile as she watched the carnage unfold through the virtual command manifold surrounding her and adjusted the angle of the second line of mortars, stationed just behind the staircase MLR.

It wasn't the death that she found so pleasant. Unlike many, she didn't hate the vampires; what they were was a fact, and the other facts of the situation made conflict inevitable.

She had few memories of her father. He'd been a Marine, one of the first to join an experimental power armor unit and one of the greatest martyred heroes in the furious battles to purge Chiba and secure the Northern Defense Line.

The mortars fired, low charges to send them arcing down to the bottom portions of the stair.

Serena had found a stray dog, a smaller, friendly animal, in the wake of the Apocalypse, and kept it as a pet thereafter. One of her only clear memories of her father was the moments leading up to, and the conversation after he shot it.

He explained that the dog had caught rabies, and that killing it was the only way to protect his beautiful little girl who mattered more to him than a million dogs ever could. He didn't hate it for that; it never had a choice.

So he did what needed to be done, regretting the necessity and nothing more.

Serena watched a bit more, then opened a channel to her Warlord-Lieutenant.

"Is it time for stage two?" She asked.

[x]

I nodded. "Let fire be their reward."

[x]

Behind the USEF defense line on the main stair, an array of tubes connected the pipes in the wall producing the torrent down the stairs with the heavy feed lines from the distant hill stations.

There were a series of large holes in the interior surface of a certain section of each tube, corresponding to rigid, bulky brace on exterior of the tube, with three thick blue hoses connected to pump intakes on each such brace.

The pumps maintained pressure in the reservoir shroud in the brace, connected to the main line of flow by several short connections slanted to point in the direction of flow. As per Bernoulli's Principle, the speed of the water moving through the pipe reduced its pressure, creating a siphon action that drew the highly concentrated aqueous industrial lubricant waiting into the shroud into the stream at a rate of thousands of liters per minute.

A vampire possessed enormous physical power, allowing it to, at speed, perform feats of athleticism and order of magnitude beyond what any human could ever accomplish. However, by nature, doing so was like driving a sports car on winding, poorly lit mountain road at autobahn speeds. The elevated agility and reaction speed of vampire made it possible.

So, a pair of devious individuals had set about to layer the entire road with ice, smooth it to Olympic regulations, spilled oil on it, and then reversed about half the turn warning signs.

A human might miss a step and fall. A vampire moving fifteen times faster will miss a step and fly.

Not, of course, that such a fail poses a serious threat to anything but their pride. It was the figures in the grey, green, and black of the United States Exile Forces Corps of Engineers that held that honor. A small team took up position at each of the plenum braces and, as the signal was given, one member of each team stopped and locked the pumps as the other two disconnected the blue hoses.

As the first man initiated a purge cycle of the reservoir shroud, his teammates moved the red hoses, between five and seven per brace, and connected them to the intakes. A moment was taken to confirm the integrity of the seals, and the pumps were restarted.

Within seconds of the last pump starting, aviation fuel was drawn into the stream of water and ejected at nearly three times the rate of the lubrication agent before it.

Seconds passed. Then a figure in slate-grey armor, indistinguishable from the soldiers around him save for the stylized eagles stenciled in dull red onto each shoulder, stepped up to near the top of the barricade, raised a pistol, and fired.

For an instant, the overwhelming cacophony of gunfire and sorcery seemed to fade as the flare ignited, burning white-hot as it rose out over the stair, reached its zenith, and began to fall.

[x]

Virgil watched as the world turned to fire. The vampires had gone sprawling when they lost friction, a massive dogpile developing as the assault stalled. Many had fallen, and many of them had yet to recover when the Colonel fired his flare.

A warning flashed across Virgil's HUD: 'FIRE HAZARD; MINOR FUEL LEAK REF CL-11'.

CL-11 was an amazing substance. It was an aviation fuel, but with an energy density such that it would have turned electric cars back into toys if it had been marketed before the Apocalypse, a gigajoule per gallon or something about as insane.

And though he didn't know, the CL-11 in question would never have been unusable as fuel. The spellcraft specialists of the Moon Demon Regiment had been hard at work over the truck-sized tanks of fuel in the week before the operation, adding their own signature touch. Bond decay augmentations, stimulation enhancement, oxidation assists and, of course, the hexes to nullify vampiric resistances.

Now, Virgil looked out, unflinching, over the hellscape before him, laying down suppressive fire more out of habit than anything else. The furious war cries of the vampire soldiery had risen into shrieks of agony as the raging flames and the guns of humanity allowed them no escape.

Within a minute, the horde of monsters had been reduced to a pathetic, tortured wreck. Virgil's vision blurred as tears rose unbidden in his eyes.

The world was truly beautiful.

[x]

Colonel Maxime Tindall Robichaux smiled as he opened a general command broadcast channel.

"This is it, gentlemen." He said, watching as the flow of water down the stairs diminished, then vanished. "Into the breach."

The first step of the charge came when the ACS troops fell back from the line they'd fought so hard to protect, allowing the engineers to blow it up as they condensed into four columns equally spaced along the front.

A pause.

Then, with a sound like Zeus himself laying down suppressive fire, the assembled lancers of the United States Ninth Cavalry Battalion charged through the provided gaps, spreading out to descend the stairs at full tilt. It took nearly two full thunderous minutes for the full thousand cavalrymen to pass. Almost as soon as the last rider had begun his descent, the 555th Mobile Infantry and the Imperial Japanese Moon Demon Regiment followed them into the earth.

[x]

Count Finavarius Velkar, Tenth Progenitor and Lord of Phlebemburg, smashed his hand into the map table, sending a web of cracks radiating across the polished black marble surface and knocking several of the unit models onto their sides.

"Repeat that." He said slowly, the best pace he could manage while retaining a semblance of composure. "Everything. In detail."

"Yes, milord." The messenger said. The commoner was clearly terrified, but his profession required considerable grace under pressure. "As ordered, Lord Chen led his soldiers in a full assault up the grand stair in order to break through the kine's defensive position and eliminate their forces on the surface. The attack was going well until they made it perhaps seven-tenths to the livestock. The exact events are unclear, but the attack was stalled, and they were killed to a man, at which point the kine launched a counterattack and-"

Finavarius dealt a short backhand to the messenger's cheek, cutting off his prattle as he was nearly decapitated and sent sprawling into a corner to crumble away. He turned back to the map table, and his somewhat more apprehensive lieutenants.

"We are still unable to contact the Duke?"

"Correct, sir. The loss of all external contact was the first sign of anything out of the ordinary, and has reminded total and constant to the present."

"And the blood supply?"

"Restive, milord. We have moved them back from the human penetrations into the city, but they know something is amiss beyond a simple attack. May saw fire spilling into the entry plaza, and hiding the continuous flow of casualties back to the cleansing and regeneration facilities is effectively impossible."

The supply minister paused. "They know we are fighting a major battle, and I believe that many have arrived at the, naturally incorrect, conclusion that we are... losing... sir."

The count glare at the newly-promoted representative of the city's soldiery. "And in reality?"

"They have penetrated several blocks outward from the entrance plaza onto the main level. The layout of that area provides no avenue for assault from above or below, and the fighting has settled into a stalemate along the main front."

"Stalemate? How have they massed a sufficiently large rabble so quickly?"

"They... I estimate about six thousand ferals total in the lodgement. There are more of the metal kine than we believed existed currently engaged, as well as a large mass of cavalry and the demon soldiers."

Count Finavarius growled. "What sort of trickery is this? Livestock cannot gain that level of power. They know they cannot fight their betters, so they must be using some artifice in an attempt to cause us to hesitate. We cannot let lower animals deceive us. Attack at once."

The military representative cleared his throat. Finavarius glanced at him.

"Milord, the line enemy line comes within three blocks of a primary avenue. If they counterattack and reach it avenue, they could use it to shift forces across nearly half of the western quadrant and potentially encircle most of our attacking force."

"What makes you think them so capable?" Finavarius said, lowering his hand to level with his sword belt.

"I normally believe nothing of the sort." The soldier responded, a hair too quickly. "But we lost many of our best fighters on the stair, and the kine have clearly gathered a large portion of their full might here."

"All the more reason to crush them now. Their improbable feat on the stair will have pushed them to the breaking point. We will shatter the entirely of their line in a single stroke."

[x]

"I think it's go time." Hinagiku said, flicking through reports on the holographic display of a battlefield Mobile she'd 'found'. "That is, if you're still insistent on going through with this... plan. It looks like the assault force has this well in hand. I'll admit I was skeptical, but the Mobile Infantry/Extermination Unit composite squads seem to be performing admirably."

I shook my head. "Eighty thousand vampires in the city, and we probably haven't killed more than twenty-five. We've eliminated the best soldiers, and now that we've secured a position inside the city, the rest are probably manageable. But we'd take casualties, and reducing the rest of the enemy will take time, which I'm not at all sure we have."

Seylaifeil appeared next to her. "For what it's worth, preparations are complete. Magically, you're about as close to full as you're going to get, and I've been cutting back on replenishment to prepare for a period of elevated output. Plus, your soul is in great condition, so there's plenty I can rip off to fuel even more."

I gave no response. It might have drawn some odd looks from my less hallucinatory comrades, but that's life.

"Anyway, I've got to agree with the pink one." Seylaifeil said. "This is a really stupid plan."

"Are the illusions going to work properly?" I asked, ignoring the whatever-Seylaifeil-was and replying in the apparently undetectable manner normal for our conversations.

"Perfectly. Fire and shadow, remember?" Seylaifeil shook her head. "Of all the dozens of types and hundreds of subtypes of magic, I'm probably fourth best at illusion."

"What are the top three?"

"Evocation and Transmutation, probably."

I pressed my lips into a line, trying to keep my reaction to that minimum. "That's two things."

Seylaifeil shrugged. "Anyway, if you want to do this, then let's get going. I'll probably want to change my relationship status in advance, get a head start on finding a new meal ticket."

Hinagiku closed her display, her spear appearing in her hand in a flash of flame. "Not like I don't have all day."

"Yeah, let's do this." I said, stepping toward the ventilation shaft, which had been cleared of pumping equipment. "Primary route going to work?"

"It should." Hinagiku said, wrapping a cable around her spear and driving it into the ground. "Nothing in the ventilation should have been able to hold water; the pressure and the incendiaries should've cleared the path."

"And everyone has the warning? I'd rather not eat a Blowdart on my way in."

Hinagiku shrugged, tossing the free end of the cable down the ventilation shaft. "I'm an idiot, not incompetent. I made sure everyone got the memo."

"Excellent." I said, stopping next to the edge of the pipe. Hinagiku handed me the cable as Natalya rather casually ripped half the pipe off and tossed it aside.

I stepped up the edge of the shaft, concentrating on making sure the jump units on my armor formed properly and most certainly not thinking about the abyss in front of me.

"He who hesitates is lost, I suppose." I muttered, turning around and taking a step back.

[x]

Izumi Kirishima was terrified. She was fairly well hidden in the detritus cluttering the top of the rooftop, but she wasn't sure if that mattered. Still, she had to remain in place; if one of the vampires, or these new attackers, came for them, she might be able to give the children below enough warning to have a fighting chance of escape.

She looked up. There was a spot in the ceiling glowing a dull cherry red. It was somewhere to the south and west, almost certainly over the city center, and it seemed to be growing, the center warming to a-

It exploded with a clap of thunder, sending incandescent debris showing onto the city below. Izumi watched with a growing sense of awe as a figure, clearly discernable as humanoid even at a distance, descended into the city cavern.

He was clad in radiant golden plate and surrounded by an aura of flickering fire. As Izumi started, wings like impossibly large cut gemstones of pure light spread from his back and his cloak of flames seemed to intensity, layers appearing one over another.

Izumi didn't remember doing anything, but she must have called the younger children, because they were all claiming positions to watch as the golden figure began to slowly descend.

Once he began to move, it only took Izumi a moment to determine his destination. He was heading directly for the citadel at the city center, the residence and stronghold of the vampire ruler.

[x]

Aria Valentine looked at the captive vampire. She'd removed most of the creature's original garments, attached well over a hundred various electrodes, Hall Effect sensors, subsurface thermal scanners, and almost anything else she could have sent to her that might give her a clue as to what was going on. As the vampire's core temperature reached the range that would have constituted a life-threatening fever for a human, Valentine stated to note some irregularities on its neural activity readout consistent with mild heat exhaustion in a human. As the temperature continued to increase, she gave up on the delicate approach and stuck the Vampire in an ice bath.

That seemed to work, stopping the core temperature increase at 104.8 and returning neural activity to the previous state of irregularity. She'd set up a supply of blood on an IV drip, and was considering salting the ice bath to see if she could get the temperature down. She had a few pharmaceuticals she wanted to test, but was fairly certain that any of them would be denatured by the vampire's elevated internal temperature before anything interesting would happen.

Something started beeping. Valentine looked back at her detailed readouts and spotted a... toxicity warning? Given the general dearth of poisons known to be effective on the undead, it would be the system making an informed guess that it had detected a compound having a probable negative effect on the subject. As she pulled up more details, she became increasingly inclined to agree.

Then she reach the analysis of the suspected toxin and stopped. It was strange, for a number of reasons.

First, it was certainly a new arrival; there had been no trace of it in any of the blood samples or biopsies Valentine had collected. However, it was certainly not something she'd administered or a probable impurity in any of those compounds, and as she considered it, became increasingly unsure if manufacturing the toxin would even be possible without atomic-level assembly.

And if someone had managed to pull that off, she'd have heard about it.

Valentine stopped for a moment, thinking. If the toxin was largely localized in the blood, or accumulated there, it was possible that she could use hemodialysis to remove it. The problem, of course, being that almost no one in New Constantinople actually needed recurring dialysis; caused by a combination of the end of the world and revolutionary medical biocybernetics.

The next option would be an exchange transfusion; flushing and refilling the entire circulatory system. It could be used to counteract extreme imbalances in body chemistry and reduce the damage caused by certain drugs or toxins, if no better method was available. Unfortunately, Valentine had no idea if that would have a similar effect on the subject.

There was also the fact that she had no idea how to perform such a procedure, but that was less of an issue. She was fairly confident that killing this particular patient would require at least some effort.

Aria spent a few minutes reading through the available literature on the subject, becoming increasingly sure that calling for an actual doctor would be a poor decision. Off the top of her head, she couldn't think of anyone trustworthy with the requisite skills, and she wasn't even sure how much good human medical training would do. The occult defenses of a noble vampire would render most medical implants largely useless; Valentine would improvising.

She stood up and walked over to one of the supply cabinets the project had appropriated and withdrew a monomolecular fullerene/qsteel scalpel.

"Take chances and make mistakes, was it?" Valentine said, watching the light play across the scalpel as she inspected the edge.

[x]

The golden figure had come to a stop over the center of the city, hovering above and before the citadel. Izumi was no stranger to ignorance of the details and nature of grand events, but this was a step beyond that.

After a moment's pause, the figure spoke.

"I have come to parley. I would speak with the lord of this city and realm."

His voice was rich and precise, with a deep, resonant quality, as though he was using one of he sound amplification systems of the Old World. It was... Impressive, to say the very least.

It took a moment for anything to happen. Izumi assumed they were delaying as some form of posturing; it seemed to be the characteristic thing from them to do.

Then a door leading onto the roof of the citadel opened, and a vampire in the decorated white cloak of the aristocracy exited. Two more followed, then a taller vampire in a much more elaborate white mantle of the nobility stepped out onto the roof and looked up at the golden figure.

"What is this?" The noble asked, with less condescension in his voice than Izumi would have expected.

"I have come to negotiate the terms of your surrender."

"Absurd!" The vampire exclaimed, slashing a hand through the air. "What are you suggesting?"

"That you and you men have acquitted yourselves well, but that your position has become untenable with no useable routes of withdrawal." The figure paused. "Honorable surrender if the only chance you or any of your command have of leaving this city... Intact."

"Are you suggesting that I am on the verge of being bested by... livestock? You've brought your rabble into my city. Your defeat is inevitable!"

"So, I suppose you're saying that your inherent superiority will carry the day?" The figure shook his head. "That's a novel hypothesis. But then, it would explain how thirteen thousand warriors held off my host of nearly a hundred thousand."

Izumi practically feel the grin.

"Wait. I think I may have gotten that backwards."

"You have ten times that number. Cattle cannot triumph against their betters-"

"You do know that ranching accidents were an occasional occurrence, right?" The figure responded. "At least, they were before you vampires killed everyone."

The vampire's tone shifted. "It was you miserable humans who brought the apocalypse upon yourselves-"

"Yes, by meddling with the curse of the Seraph of the End. I've heard the party line." A shrug. "But I find it hard to believe. In the absence of any evidence... Well, Qui Bono?"

The vampire said nothing.

"In any case, you really should try and be less inflammatory. I'm trying to be a magnanimous victor, but your rather questionable rhetoric and creative logic is making me want to reconsider. If you'd like to skip to the ad hominem attacks, I'd be fine with that if it gets this discussion back on track."

Izumi couldn't quite make out the vampire lord's response, though it didn't sound particularly eloquent or well-enunciated.

"Well. How about this." The figure shifted slightly in the air. "You and your men lay down arms, and the United States Exile Forces accept your surrender. We collect your weapons and take custody of your captives, and you go back to your settlement near Tokushima, by a method to be agreed upon following provisional acceptance. You and your people all swear that you don't take up arms against organized human forces for one thousand days, and no one else has to die today."

"So, you have the gall to come here and demand that my people turn over our weapons, to you livestock?" The vampire sounded like he was practically spitting. "I will tear out your entrails and water the ground with your blood. I will-"

[x]

I winced internally as Count Finavarius started ranting. It probably hadn't been wise to hit so many berserk buttons in quick succession, but in my defense, he had a lot of those, and I was having far more fun than was situationally appropriate.

The aura of fire around me was the product of three simple and intentionally sloppy illusion spells. There was a second one on my armor, and two more to make up the wings of light. It was absurd and over the top, which was exactly what I was going for. Even combined, the six spells weren't particularly energy-intensive, though I probably could have used a quarter of what they were using if I'd created one enchantment and constructed it properly.

"-Water the ground with your blood. I will rend your carcass for the vultures and-"

I raised my hand to point at the Vampire Count.

"Fiat Lux." I said, releasing the massive enchantment I'd been holding in place and constructing.

For a moment, the air around me seemed to thrum with power as the various component parts of the spell fell into place.

Then a ray of liquid fire as brilliantly white as the unfiltered sun lanced out from my hand, tracing a razor-straight path down to the center of the citadel below.

The beam burned a torso-sized hole in Finavarius' chest as it passed to strike the stone behind him. It flashed the stone to vapor, the material expertly warded against wide-area attacks akin to the slashing magics popular with the vampire nobility lasting bare instants against the insanely focused attack.

The superheated cloud of vaporized material blasted into the chamber below, scattering the leading edge of the beam, turning the air to fire. The gas cooled as it explosively expanded, through slowed by the backblast from the beam cutting through the floor, with the net effect of the entire upper level abruptly becoming a sort of facsimile of the inside of the cartridge of a firing rifle. Eventually, the cool outside air would rush back in through the shattered windows and cracked exterior walls and allow anything even remotely flammable inside the building to burn, but not until well after the process had repeated itself on each level down to the ground.

I looked down at the smoke beginning to spill out of the gutted citadel. It was a good start, but there was still a whole city of bloodsucking parasites left below me. It was time for a cleansing fire.

Marshaling my power, I held out my hand, and a pinpoint of light appeared. It grew brighter, quickly reaching what might have been hazardous intensity, for a lesser man. I would-

"Quirinus! What the hell are you doing?"

"What do you want, Robichaux?" I growled, looking back towards the USEF line.

"You are listing in excess of ten degrees, Lieutenant." Max shot back. "And I don't like what your shadow is doing. Stand down."

I stood outside myself for a moment, then returned to a skewed world.

The power coursing through my blood vanished, leaving behind an overwhelming and empty cold. My armor became an encumbrance, as if I was wearing simple steel.

And I realized exactly what I'd been thinking. What I'd been considering.

"Roger that." I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. "Mission accomplished. Returning to base."

[x]

For the umpteenth time in the past hour, Serena ran through the checklist for the upcoming operation. It was largely an addendum to the amphibious assault, but securing a gain was just as important as taking it, and the briefing had implied that this was about more than simply shooting down the vampire transports before they reached the outer defense lines.

Exterior power feeds... Auxiliary cooling systems... Long-range fire control... All systems were go.

"Contacts have reached the outer marker." The radar tech said, speaking over the tactical voice channel. "Standby to fire."

[x]

I groaned, waking up slowly. It was, of course, the dreams. Again.

Seylaifeil appeared, sitting at the foot of the bed. She was wearing what appeared to be a nightgown variant of her usual flame-and-char attire. It might have been rather appealing; I didn't allow myself to check.

"So, this makes what?" She said. "Twelve of the past twenty nights?"

"Thirteen of twenty-one now." I shook my head. "And you are being entirely truthful and forthright when you say you have nothing to do with this, or no knowledge thereof?"

"Yes. Absolutely."

The response came just a hair too slow.

I sighed. "I'm not going to get back to sleep right now. I'm going for a walk."

Seylaifeil said nothing as I slid out of bed and grabbed my uniform jacket from the peg on the wall. The 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade Legio Alera had appropriated a mostly-sound office building and converted it into a temporary headquarters, and a large number of the offices had become generally livable quarters for the officers and command staff. Organized resistance in the city below had ceased, but the area had yet to be declared safe.

I walked out of my quarters, down the stairs, and out the checkpoint on the ground floor into the cold march air. I was barely slowed; I simply returned the salutes of the four ACS troopers and eight armored Marines on obvious guard and continued out.

The nightmares were like insane fever dreams; confusing, overwhelming and relentless sensory barrages. I felt like there was something coherent happening just beyond my understanding; but there was too much happening too quickly to actually comprehend any of it.

Generally, the nightmares seemed to follow a fairly regular pattern. I'd wake up at some point, usually a few hours after falling asleep, having spent an indeterminate period of subjective time under assault by one of the dreams. Then, at some point, I'd usually fall asleep again and have no further difficulties.

It was rather vexing, for a number of reasons.

Eventually, I found my way to another building, somewhere closer to the waterfront. Judging by the colored bands spraypainted next to the door, the engineers had designated the building as structurally sound and scheduled it for demolition later tomorrow, or rather, later this afternoon. I walked through the empty front wall and came to a staircase. I wasn't really sure where I was going, or what I was looking for. I reached the top of the stairs and found myself stepping out onto the roof and approaching the rail, looking out over the corpse of the city man had once called Kochi.

Though the area was yet to be fully secured, work had already begun.

For the first time in nearly a decade, everywhere I looked, lights burned defiance into the night. Out on the water, running lights gleamed in three neat collections; the Fast Battleship Virginia and the heavy cruisers Anchorage and Helena.

With dredging eight years overdue and what port facilities had been present thoroughly decayed, unloading the fleet of 'transports' surrounding the three warships at the seawall would have been difficult. The engineers had solved this by the simple expedient of leveling most of the buildings for several blocks along the waterfront and bulldozing the rubble into the water, then pouring waterproof concrete and repeating, forming wharfs extending out into water deep enough for the re-purposed vessels to dock.

Apparently, 'waterproof' should have been prefaced with a 'kind of', and the improperly cured concrete would probably become rather inconvenient at some point in the future. But then, if we couldn't offload the supplies to strengthen the position, the future wouldn't be a concern.

Elsewhere, all across the city, small collections of light marked the positions of salvage crews at work. The purpose of that was twofold; to clear space in the city, and to strip it of useful materials. Waste not, want less.

There was one patch, of course, lit only by flickering firelight. The battle had been a stunning, overwhelming victory.

But there had still been casualties. Perfection remained ever-distant.

The pyres had burned down to coals now; most of the light came from the torches set as Watchlights around the burning ground.

The funerary customs of the Exile Forces were remarkable atavistic for a people who commanded such high technology. They saw no value in interring the departed in a dead world; and it was seen as largely disrespectful to allow anyone, but especially a fallen solider, to lie on the cold ground longer than necessary. A friend or comrade bearing witness to a through cremation was seen as preferable to a body being returned home. However, I still had little idea how the traditions had come about.

"We are a warrior people. This serves to remind us of that."

I turned, surprised. Fealty was standing near the center of the roof, her expression unreadable in the darkness.

"It is paradoxical, I believe largely by intention." She continued, as she walked toward me. "Field expediency. We lacked the resources for burial in the early days, and burning a fallen comrade was seen as preferable to leaving them for the Horsemen to devour. We used thermite at first; wood became a component later to add a touch of humanity.

Fealty leaned on the railing, looking out over the city. Her eyes seemed... bright, as if they were doing more than simply reflecting the starlight.

"We see the corpse as a shell, once the person is gone, yet we are very careful in our casual treatment of it." She looked up, out toward the distant mountains, and sighed. "I believe it is intended to be human. We are creatures of paradox, you know. Our greatest gift and our tragic hamartia. Sometimes, I don't wonder if..."

I looked up at the stars, still amazed by their brightness and clarity. "That might be a good thing, though. I'm not sure perfection would be entirely desirable."

"And yet, you're up here ruminating about how the battle was less than perfect."

"That's part of it." I said.

I almost told her about what had happened. I wanted to. But I looked down at her shoulder, devoid of a unit insignia, and the dots came together. She'd never discussed her unit, and I'd never gotten a clear idea of what exactly it was that she did.

It seemed like too basic a mistake for a spy to make, and I wasn't entirely sure who she'd be a spy for, but nothing else made any sense.

So I said nothing. Maybe that was a mistake.

But then, I'd make much greater mistakes in the days to come.

END OF PART ONE